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There were 1 million PlayStation 4 game consoles sold on Friday's launch date in North America, according to Sony. Eager buyers lined up at GameStop stores and other outlets in U.S. and Canada to get the new console, which initially seems to be in short supply. IHS is predicting 2.4 million consoles will be sold by the end of the year, while Sony has set a target of 5 million by the end of March.

In a Reuters/Ipsos online poll of nearly 1,300 U.S. shoppers, 26% said they would be more likely to purchase Sony's PlayStation 4 console, while 15% would opt for Microsoft's Xbox One. Among shoppers less than 40 years old, 41% would want the PS4 and 27% the Xbox One, the survey found.

The PlayStation 4 console will go on sale in Japan on Feb. 22, 2014, more than three months after its North American debut, according to Sony. The PS4 will be offered in Europe on Nov. 29. Microsoft is holding back the Japanese release of its Xbox One console, which bows on Nov. 22 in the U.S. and a dozen other countries, until 2014 as well.

The forthcoming Sony PlayStation 4 console will come out in North America on Nov. 15, priced at $399. The PS4's European rollout was set for Nov. 29. This is the first time Sony will sell a new console in the U.S. before offering it in Japan. The new Sony console will be on sale in 32 countries by the end of 2013, according to Sony, which says it has taken 1 million preorders for the PS4.

The Cell microprocessor at the heart of the PlayStation 3 was a powerful processor, but it initially proved to be too complex for game developers to master, Dean Takahashi writes. When Mark Cerny was named architect of the PlayStation 4 project, he found that both Advanced Micro Devices and Intel had developed microprocessors for PCs that combined central processing units and graphics processing units in a single chip, making such devices suitable for a game console, he notes. These new processors make it easy to get started with game development but have advanced capabilities that will become apparent as developer mastery improves.